I’ve started using Windows Live Writer, Microsoft’s free offline blog editor which it distributes under its “Live Essentials” toolkit. What’s nice about this software is that you can compose blog posts in a WYSIWYG environment with a full set of editing and format tools, save and organize your posts before publishing, and much more.

The software mimics what most blogs already have in terms of editing functionality, but provides a more complete feature set and, most importantly, a common editing environment that allows you to manage an unlimited number of blogs simultaneously…a godsend for SEOs working on multiple client accounts. Unlike the latest versions of Microsoft Word, which also allow publishing directly to blogs, Live Writer is free for anyone to use, and works with virtually any blog. The GUI includes useful image editing tools for which you’d normally need additional software, as well as table and charting functions, photo albums, video, and it also supports an extensible plug-in architecture for developers to add their own features.

I will post some how-tos and screen shots to help anyone interested in setting up this software. Whether you’re editing a single blog or manage dozens of different websites, this offline blog-editor really makes for better blogging.